United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

After Clause 10

Further exclusions from market access principles

I beg to move,

That this House agrees with Lords amendments 8P, 8Q, 8R, 8S, 8T and 8U.

I am delighted to be able to come back to the House today with positive news for business and for our constituents. As I have said before, I am immensely grateful to colleagues across both Houses for their constructive discussions with Government, and I would like to extend my thanks to all colleagues in both Houses for working with the Government to reach agreement on how we can best ensure that the frictionless intra-UK trade we enjoy today can continue into the future, especially as we recover together from covid-19. As we have made clear, this Bill is about protecting businesses and livelihoods—real people and real jobs—and I am pleased that both Houses have worked constructively to do that. I want to again extend my thanks to colleagues on the Opposition Benches in this place, and in the other place in particular, for their engagement.

As I set out to the House yesterday, the Government are committed to the common frameworks programme. We attach enormous value to the fora that they provide for collaborative working with the devolved Administrations. The Government have also been clear that the market access principles will work in tandem with common frameworks. We have been asked to provide as much clarity as possible on our continuing commitment to the programme, and we have thought long and hard about this over recent weeks. It is important that we respect the flexibility, and also the commonality, of common frameworks, paying close attention to the interests of all parts of the UK involved in the common frameworks programme and protecting the voluntary and consensus-driven nature of the programme. Indeed, these aspects are key to the effectiveness of the processes. The Government have listened carefully and reflected on the points put forward in both Houses about putting common frameworks on the face of the Bill, and we have now done so through these Lords amendments.

Obviously we welcome some sort of concession on common frameworks, but the Minister said yesterday that enshrining common frameworks in the Bill would create uncertainty for business, so what has changed between last night and today?

What has changed is the convivial and constructive discussions we have had to allow for amendments that are worded to the satisfaction of, certainly, the other place and I hope this place, which will allow us to progress with both the common frameworks as a voluntary process and the certainty of the internal market.

Before the Minister starts launching the fireworks in celebration of the progress in the Lords yesterday, I would like to remind him that the Welsh Government remain deeply dissatisfied and have announced that they intend taking the UK Government to court over the provisions in the Bill, not least the state aid provisions and the economic intervention proposals. Will he explain how the common frameworks process will work and where power will reside within the common frameworks, because there is a degree of ambiguity about that? Will he also commit the British Government to bringing a statement on the common frameworks to the House of Commons for scrutiny in the new year so that we can have a discussion about whether this is actually the best way forward?

Clearly it is disappointing that the Welsh Government have chosen to issue that statement, especially in the light of the productive working relationship that we have enjoyed with their Ministers and officials during the passage of the Bill. I know that the common frameworks have been subject to much debate, and I hope I will be able to clarify this as we proceed. There will be more discussion in the new year about the frameworks and how they will work moving forward, because they have been productive in a number of areas to date, and I know that that will continue.

I, too, thank the Minister for what he has brought forward, but I seek clarification, as I often do, on the position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. Will the final decisions on any movement of goods, east-west, north-south, or whatever it may be, lie with the Northern Ireland Assembly or with this place? Also, what discussions has he had with the Northern Ireland Assembly, the First Minister, the Deputy First Minister and the Minister at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment?

Ironically, not particularly on common frameworks or the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, although I have taken over from my ministerial colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), in the quad discussions with the devolved Administrations. I had my first one this morning, and I look forward to further conversations. As for what happens to Northern Ireland goods to GB and vice versa, we have had an agreement in the Joint Committee. I look forward to seeing the results of the talks that are continuing in Brussels, because ultimately if there is a pathway to a deal, that will help to smooth the transition process. Ultimately, however, the long-term aim of what happens to the workings of the Northern Ireland protocol will sit with the elected representatives of Northern Ireland, given their vote in a few years’ time.

The Government here are demonstrating their commitment to the programme by, first, placing common frameworks on the face of the Bill, through our amendments yesterday in the other place, and, secondly, clarifying the relationship that we see between agreements made under the common frameworks processes and the internal market principles established by the Bill. Specifically, we are making it clear, through amendments 8P to 8S, that delegated powers under clauses 10 and 17 may be utilised to, among other things, make provision to reflect common framework agreements. In such cases, the Secretary of State would be able to bring to the House a statutory instrument to exclude from market access principles a specific agreed area of divergence. That would follow consensus being reached between the UK Governments and all the relevant parties that that was appropriate, in respect of a specific defined topic within a common framework.

For parts 1 and 2 of the Bill, previous amendments are provided for consent to be sought from the devolved Administrations. If that is not forthcoming within a month, MPs and peers from all parts of the UK will thereafter be able to debate and, if appropriate, agree to the change. We do not currently expect such cases to arise very frequently, but want to be clear that appropriate means are in place to respect them when they do.

Well, here we are again—groundhog day. Early on, I dubbed this Bill the infernal market Bill, and it has certainly lived up to that name. It is good to see the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) in his seat again. I am not sure what he is going to do in a few weeks’ time after all his doughty energies tackling issues around Brexit. I am not sure whose fault it is all going to be in a few weeks’ time. Perhaps Ministers should watch their backs; they might find it is their fault once Brexit can no longer be blamed for all his ills.

Let me start by thanking Ministers and their officials for the discussions that we have had in recent days about how we can make the best of this bad Bill. Let us be honest: when it first saw the light of day, it was clear for all to see what a terrible Bill this was. It was wrong in seeking to break international law, and it was wrong in disrespecting the devolution settlement and failing to understand the way the UK now works through power sharing. That is why we have been so vociferously opposed to it in this House.

We led the way on that, starting, as you will remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) taking down every single argument of the Prime Minister, who was here himself on Second Reading. Through the Bill’s many stages in this House, we have been clear in our opposition to some of its serious flaws. It has been a long and difficult process.

If Labour has really led the way, why did it back down in the votes in the other place on protecting devolution in respect of Westminster’s ability to spend and meddle in devolved affairs?

The hon. Gentleman knows that that is not the case. That is not what happened in the other place. It is thanks to the Labour leadership in the other place that we have seen improvements to the Bill, and I will say a bit more about that in a minute.

The Bill is now in much better shape than it was. It is far from good, let alone perfect, but it is better. That is thanks to the leadership shown by Labour colleagues in the other place, who built alliances and worked with guile and tenacity to get us to where we are. The Government, by the way, have a majority in the other place; despite that, we managed to inflict a number of Government defeats. As a result, the Government dropped most of part 5, which was the international lawbreaking part of the Bill originally and now upholds the Northern Ireland protocol.

After Labour worked cross-party with colleagues and others to ensure successive Government defeats in the other place, and after several rounds of ping-pong— I have lost count of how many—the Bill has been improved in a number of ways. We have the one-month mechanism for the devolved Administrations’ consent on regulations, the operation of the internal market in the interest of consumers, the consent and involvement of the devolved Administrations on the make-up and operation of the Office for the Internal Market, and the removal and review of the Henry VIII powers.

Today, we welcome the Government’s concessions on common frameworks in response to Lord Hope’s and Lord Stevenson’s amendments. In particular, amendments to clauses 10 and 17 allow for agreements arising from common frameworks to be excluded from the application of market principles. They also include in the Bill a definition of a common framework agreement, something that we have been seeking from the beginning. We also welcome the amendment to clause 31, which provides for the Competition and Markets Authority and the Office for the Internal Market to include in their five-year reporting details of the interaction between market access principles and common framework agreements, and of the impact of common framework agreements on the operation and development of the internal market.

The hon. Lady will be aware that, as I said earlier, the Labour Government in Wales are threatening legal action. Is that something that she and the Labour party in Westminster will be supporting?

I have just been alerted to that. I am not sure of the details at this stage, so it is probably best that I do not comment. However, it is obviously a Labour Administration, and we support them and have worked very closely with them. I thank them for their co-operation with us on the Bill.

Common frameworks will allow different nations in the UK to set their own standards in key areas and to agree minimum standards for all. That is why it was so important to us from the start that there was recognition of common frameworks on the face of the Bill. However, it is still far from ideal, and the Government have been dragged kicking and screaming to these issues only because of the pressure we have applied, working tirelessly in the other place. I pay tribute again to Lord Hope, Lord Stevenson and Baroness Hayter for all their work on this.

It is no thanks to the nationalist parties that we have achieved these concessions. Madam Deputy Speaker, you were in the Chair yesterday, and they were giving me grief as usual, because their tactic is to engage not in the legislative process and in seeking improvements, but in the politics of grievance. Despite one of them being in government in Scotland and having a sizeable parliamentary group here, it is always somebody else’s fault, isn’t it? They sit at the back of the bus, with their arms folded, shouting at others in order to get a bit of clickbait for social media, which I am sure is what they were doing yesterday. Hon. Members should be in no doubt that the Labour party has led the charge in opposing this Bill. We have led the Government to the improvements and changes that we see today, and although the Bill is far from perfect, it is much better. We did that because we have to live with this Bill in the years to come.